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Print Media Versus The Internet

By Bill French

Services for Real Estate Pros with MyST Technology Partners

November 22, 2006 03:09 PM

This may be another one of those topics that I know least about - the impact of the Web on the use of print media in real estate. However, I'd love to get a better understanding from people that know a good deal about the use of magazines, newspaper ads, and other print media for advertising homes. I'm particularly curious about the relationship between print media and the Web today, and in the future.

The following dialog with a friend started me wondering about this tenuous relationship between the Internet and print media. Please read it and lend me your thoughts - my friend's comments are in quotes - my observations are italicized. I'm not suggesting any outcome is either good or bad - I'm just pondering what the future holds for print media.

"... most realtors have highly visual websites ..."

This is the stuff of Web 1.0 - an era when only humans trolled the web. As such, visually appealing sites that were designed for people and relatively simple in functionality, met the exact requirements for businesses and its customers.

"Blogs aren't necessarily as visual as traditional websites."

Correct - the success attributes of a Web 2.0 site must factor in the machines (i.e., the crawlers, agents, bots, and every manner of non-human arbitration possible). To be successful they must be "visually" appealing to machines and humans, but machines have a different definition of "vision" - a definition that is largely based on business rules and content topology.

"If home buyers & sellers are all searching online first and blogs generate SEO then why would any realtor need print?"

Precisely the symptom of a coming disruption. When it becomes cheaper and more efficient to communicate without paper, paper will become irrelevant. Looking at it from another angle - when it becomes cheaper and more efficient to find and select homes without obtaining paper pamphlets, the internet will be most relevant. It's easy to speculate that the tipping point is near - 77% of all real estate quests begin online. This might correlate with a slow but constant drop in print effectiveness which we seem to hear from time-to-time. But is the growth in online search really the harbinger we assume it to be?

We can see parallels in other industries. When was the last time you actually read a paper prospectus? Or stopped by your travel agents office to select from a wide array of travel pamphlets? When was the last time you paid an accountant to use a pen to fill out your tax return? Print (and paper) is almost meaningless in these three business sectors. Why would the future of real estate be any different?

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Sharon Simms

Coastal Properties Group International - Christie's International - Saint Petersburg, FL

St. Petersburg FL - CRS CIPS CLHMS RSPS

We stopped using print advertising for our listings a year or two ago...do use it selectively for personal branding, and just to let our clients and contacts know that we ARE still in the business.

We know people who no longer get a newspaper delivered, but read their news online.

Nov 22, 2006 10:21 PM

Rudy Mayer

Better Homes & Gardens | The Masiello Group Real Estate - Nashua, NH

New Hampshire Real Estate & Homes

This article on Virtual House Hunting just appeared in last Sunday's newspaper - pretty much quoting me as saying that I don't do ANY print advertising, and very little direct mail (an Xmas calendar... periodically a 'just listed/ just sold' card).

Almost all of my marketing dollars go towards the internet. Last year I was ranked #10 out of over 500 agents in my company - so clearly my web strategy over the past seven+ years has paid off.

Since most realtors, offices and companies (in this area anyway) don't really understand the internet and more importantly marketing on the internet, it puts me at a distinct advantage over 95%++ of my competition.

These days, it's all about doing something different. Most agents have a template website that looks like everyone else, that sits out there doing very little (if anything) in regards to bringing in leads and business, and I'm out there marketing my 8 websites like crazy.

It works in a big way - but you need to make the commitment. It's not something that happens by itself nor is there an easy, quick way to success. (exactly like everything else in business).

Nov 23, 2006 03:16 AM

Anonymous

You don't seem to know what web 2.0 is. According O'Reily the group that came up with the term, web 2.0 has nothing to do with SEO or design and everything to do with social networking, wikis and folksonomies. Web 2.0 design (a completely different animal) is defined by large print, glossy graphics, gradient fills and often utilizes liquid layout CSS design. That being said, a look does not define a standard. Web 2.0 design can still be highly graphical- look at Flash Nifties, that is a good example of what web 2.0 design looks like.

Nov 23, 2006 06:46 AM

Kevin Fontenot

IDS Consulting - Houston, TX

"Correct - the success attributes of a Web 2.0 site must factor in the machines (i.e., the crawlers, agents, bots, and every manner of non-human arbitration possible)."

Wrong, I have to agree with anon (above) and say that you have no idea what Web 2.0 is. Web 2.0 is a way of communicating and interacting with others and is not a look at all. The only connection between the two is the fact that Web 2.0 sites tend to share common ideas about look and feel but visuals are not part of Web 2.0 itself.

And since web 2.0 is socially driven, bots play no real part in it. In fact if you follow web 2,0 trends you would see that Ajax weighs heavily into them and Ajax by its very nature is NOT spider friendly.

You may want to reference this article before you post on a topic like web 2.0.

Nov 23, 2006 07:13 AM

Bill French

MyST Technology Partners - Dillon, CO

Kevin/Anon -

"You don't seem to know what web 2.0 is."

It's true that I don't know everything about Web 2.0 and the term itself is not fully defined in every context, but isn't it also possible that O'Reilly's definition is not complete? After all, the article referenced is a year and a half old and originates at the evolutionary tipping point following the Internet bubble.

One context that I was referring to in my post has much to do with the semantic web (A Tim Berners-Lee) reference from long before O'Reilly coined the Web 2.0 term. However wrong it may be to lump semantic aspects of Web and Internet evolution into the Web 2.0 bucket seems [ironically] like a semantic debate. ;-) Wikipedia provides a useful reference that relates specifically to the context I was attempting to articulate:

"Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Swedish word for "car", to reserve a library book, or to search for the cheapest DVD and buy it. However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without human direction because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines." -- Wikipedia/Semantic Web

And I'm perplexed by your comment - you referenced my statement that -- of the many success factors in Web 2.0, a site that wants to evolve, must factor in the machines. You then suggest that I'm off base because Web 2.0 is "not a look at all" (to which I agree BTW). To be clear, I didn't say or even intimate that Web 2.0 was about the look of a site. I think the reference in this post (as it relates to print media) clearly focuses on the "visual appeal" to machines, not humans.

And since you brought up the definition of Web 2.0...

I also think there are many aspects of Internet evolution that work in conjunction with each other to define the second important plateau of Web evolution; CSS, RSS, XML-over-HTTP, Flash, etc. Even the folks that authored the Wikipedia definition recognize that O'Reilly's definition is often regarded as "ill-defined and often criticized".

With regard to SEO - I think many of the evolutionary aspects of Web 2.0 have much to do with findability, easier discoverability, information finding people when they need it most instead of the other way around. Applications that express content in semantic forms tend to have greater "visual appeal" to crawlers -- just as Ajax applications tend to have greater visual appeal to humans. Both dimensions seem to be part of a more complete evolutionary scaffolding that bridges Web 1.0 (the "first version") to Web 2.0.

"Web 2.0 is a way of communicating and interacting with others and is not a look at all."

If your definition of "others" also includes machines working on behalf of humans, then I agree with this statement. But even then, I would clarify that extending human-to-human communications is one of many attributes of Web 2.0 evolution. I'm sure you agree that protocols, server-side programming techniques, client-side programming techniques, and others are each attributes of a more complete landscape known as Web 2.0.

"Ajax weighs heavily into them and Ajax by its very nature is NOT spider friendly."

This is exactly my point - traditional websites (of Web 1.0) are typically optimized for user friendliness, ecommerce, buying behaviors and the many things that only humans readily embrace and appreciate. I believe that Ajax is simply an extension of that idea and one of the success factors for Web 2.0 participation. But both approaches - while ideal evolutionary steps to better usability - fail to meet new requirements for other aspects of Web evolution. More importantly -- in the case of Ajax which reduces findability, it necessitates the need to provide alternate methods for crawlers to understand the meaning of your site and its content.

Without more semantically tagged content (e.g., XML), sites of all types will struggle to be seen and understood in the future. Tagging and it's interlace with social networks is a good example of increasing findability trough non-visual and non-design attributes.

"... bots play no real part in it."

Hmmm -- everywhere I look, I see social networking being supercharged by machines working on behalf of users. RSS readers, RSS crawlers, RSS with embedded tag elements, tag clouds represented as XML, new social search engines based solely on XML content and communities based on interactions driven by machines that use XML representations of personal information (e.g., FOAF and folksonomies). A quick glance at Wikipedia's definition produces this gem -

"The first and the most important step (according to one point of view) of evolution towards Web 2.0 involves the syndication of Web site content." -- Wikipedia/Web 2.0

How could syndicated content be considered one of the most important evolutions to Web 2.0 but not require the use of bots? A newsreader is fundamentally a bot - it's a machine - working on behalf of the user to find new information that the user wants so that the user doesn't have to go to each site and try to assess what's new. There are many types of bots leveraging syndicated information - much of it social data; much of it business content.

Nov 23, 2006 08:40 AM

Kevin Fontenot

IDS Consulting - Houston, TX

I find it interesting that would say that an article by the group the defined Web 2.0 would be incorrect. Next you will be telling me that Merriam-Webster has the wrong definitions for its words.

"How could syndicated content be considered one of the most important evolutions to Web 2.0 but not require the use of bots? A newsreader is fundamentally a bot - it's a machine - working on behalf of the user to find new information that the user wants so that the user doesn't have to go to each site and try to assess what's new. There are many types of bots leveraging syndicated information - much of it social data; much of it business content."

You are so wrong here that I do not even know where to begin. An RSS reader does not crawl sites and it does not attempt to build associated knowledge based on what it has just seen whereas as a bot does. An RSS reader is just a tool for viewing a file that exists in a predefined spot and is no more a bot than Microsoft Word is.

I find it interesting that in another post you cite a five year old term paper as fact but dismiss a document by the defining group that was published last year as inaccurate. Next we will be debating the existence of gravity and jelly donuts.

Nov 24, 2006 01:52 AM

Bill French

MyST Technology Partners - Dillon, CO

Kevin -

We can continue to debate the subtle nuances and definitions of "bots" and "machines" that work on behalf of users, but it's really off-message for this particular post and you're stretching to find something to argue about.

If you find everything I say about every subject so troubling and in gross error, why don't you constructively contribute to this community by publishing some meaningful and educationl posts that real estate people might learn from? Your own blog would be a fine place to do that, but I see that you have yet to offer anything to this community in the two months you've been a member.

Surely, if I'm blogging only to scam people with my scammy software, and my scammy untruths, you can find a few minutes each week to not scam people, right?

Nov 24, 2006 11:14 AM

Kevin Fontenot

IDS Consulting - Houston, TX

The beautiful part about social networking is that it affords people the opportunity to correct misconceptions. Would you rather continue to believe and quote things that are incorrect or have it pointed out so you can amend your knowledge? I am sorry that you are offended by my presence but I am just here to clarify what you say and answer questions.

If you want to go to the premise of this post, I will certainly do so. You refer to the internet as the catalyst from removing print media and yet paper usage climbs every year so what is your assertion based on?

Do you want to see what I can write? Give me a tech topic and I will write it and I will happily allow you to dissect my words and I will not take offense.

Nov 24, 2006 12:40 PM

Bill French

MyST Technology Partners - Dillon, CO

Kevin -

"You refer to the internet as the catalyst from removing print media and yet paper usage climbs every year so what is your assertion based on."

The only assertions I made in this post were:

When it becomes cheaper and more efficient to communicate without paper, paper will become irrelevant.
This might correlate with a slow but constant drop in print effectiveness which we seem to hear from time-to-time.

This post calls for more understanding on the subject from real estate professionals that have a more complete version of reality than my own; it presents no conclusions of my own.

While I have sparse knowledge about the use of paper in real estate, I believe that paper has a very bright future if your definition of paper is broader than the one we commonly think of today. In fact, more than two years ago I said -

"Some day I'll want to make sure the terrabyte in the palm of my hand is synchronized with my petabyte disk drive. Like paper, LapLink still has has a bright future in computing." -- Remember Laplink?

"... and yet paper usage climbs every year."

In real estate? For print media? If true this is useful data because the comments seem to suggest the opposite -- this is precisely what I'm trying to better understand.

If you listen to the paper vendors in real estate - the folks that provide magazines, print services, layout tools, etc - they will say that paper is now more inportant than ever before and they're working diligently to connect paper to Internet-based information. Perhaps a little biased - but it's the story in all print-media booths at NAR:2006. This general group of vendors seem to suggest that now (more than ever) is the time to build brand through print media. But the other side of the coin points to a steady decline in effectiveness of print media -

"Just a few years ago, one could easily rely on steady buyers and fresh listings just by purchasing full page real estate guide ads at $3,000 a pop. Today, less than 17% of your traffic will come from print media. By the end of 2006, less than 11% of your customers will come from print media." -- Real Estate Marketing

If we believe NAR -- indeed, the reason my second bullet point in this comment was mentioned in the proginal post -- the effectiveness of print media is declining.

Nov 24, 2006 10:52 PM

John Helmering

Vail Valley Real Estate, Inc. - Vail, CO

Vail Valley Real Estate Expert Service Provider

PRINT MEDIA NOT GOING AWAY FOR A LONG TIME TO COME

For the purposes of full disclosure, my name is John Helmering and I have been a real estate agent for eighteen years in Vail, Colorado. I have been an active real estate blogger at www.blog.vailpropertysearch.com for over two years and also am the co-founder of Real Estate Blogsites^TM.

That being said, Bill French and I know each other well as his company provides the technology for our real estate blogging platform. However, you will see that my viewpoint is very different. This is my assessment of traditional marketing and internet marketing.

Real Estate agents have been using a myriad of advertorial components including the internet to foster their business and meet buyers and sellers for a long time. Providing the right marketing balance is really what we are talking about here; one marketing approach certainly does not contradict or eliminate another. An all encompassing marketing approach including all medias is the best possible way to gain market share in real estate. And if your budget doesn't allow for that, I encourage real estate agents to create subtle combinations of marketing exposure. Even niche marketing by real estate industry professionals has been proven to be very successful; it doesn't matter whether you are door knocking or blogging, just so you are meeting new customers and clients. When television came along, did print media go away? You think I'm gonna take my "For Sale" signs down just because everyone can find me on the internet?

In fact, for a long time to come, it would be my prediction that we will see classified, display, and print advertising used for selling and buying real estate. Currently, there are several well funded print media companies that are doing a fantastic job creating proofs and ROI for Realtors by driving website traffic using traditional marketing and print medias. They have proven print and visuals works well for real estate and have proven they can enhance it with web services like IDX search. Who knows, Real Estate Blogging could be their next big promotion. This is not an "all or none" transition and never will be.

To be an effective real estate agent, it takes a multi faceted marketing approach that includes print advertising, audio, video, internet, referrals, yard signs, and even cocktail parties. Sure 77% of all consumers search the internet during their real estate transaction but how many other things above do they see or respond to that affect their purchase outcome and more importantly, for this conversation, what real estate agent will they choose to work with and why?

We should really try and come up with ways blogging and other web services can help to better use traditional marketing and promotion. For instance in my Real Estate Blogsites^TM business, I often allude to the Long Tail of search on Visistat to help guide content with the agents print marketing strategies.

There was a time not so long ago that Real Estate Agents had to completely readjust their thinking and completely overhaul their website presence. This transition started about four years ago and it was called Internet Data Exchange (IDX). For over 100 years, Realtors OWNED all of the listing information and now they were being told that in order to stay competitive, they would have to "give up" this information. This was a very complicated "change of thought" process for Realtors. This is not unlike what we are asking Realtors to do when they consider Web 2.0 strategies. Realtors will adapt to change quicker than any other professional on the planet, but they also understand the value of traditional marketing and will not abandoned marketing strategies that are proven until the consumer dictates otherwise; which, in my humble opinion, is a "long time to come".

Nov 26, 2006 02:05 AM

Anonymous

Victor Lund, VP Homes Magazine

The impact of the web on print media is the most relevant topic of successful marketing today. I would reflect that this marketing topic goes beyond print into all media channels, including TV and Radio. The impact of the web on print media is the most relevant topic of successful marketing today. I would reflect that this marketing topic goes beyond print into all media channels, including TV and Radio.

The web has completely changed consumer reaction to all types of media.

In the past, consumers would view an advertisement then react – the call to action was typically “call us today” or “visit the store for our Saturday Sale” etc.

Although I do not recall where I picked up this phrase, it rings true “A good deal is not the deal you get, it is the deal that you think you got.” Another phrase I picked up somewhere is that “you purchase on emotion, then justify the purchase with logic.”

Today, consumers view the advertisement, then go online to see if the offer has real value, then they react – call or visit the store. The most effective advertising strategy today is to capture the consumers correct emotion as it relates to your product, send them to your website, then get them to purchase.

Print is very emotive. It can be very artful. Where newspapers are failing, glossy color print is expanding. Remember, color magazines are only 20 years old. Reading them is pleasant. Reading a newspaper is not.

Consumers still enjoy the touch and feel of print. As an artful expression, it continues to motivate people emotionally.

Barry Diller understands this very well – of his 10 Million Dollar ad budget for lendingtree.com, less than 100,000 is spent online – it is all spent on TV, Radio, and Print.

Conversion rates from different methods of advertising are monitored by professional advertisers using web stats. We monitor web traffic fluctuations relative to our media buys. For example, I know that 1 page of advertising in our magazine drives 8 visitors a day to an agent or broker website. I also know that traffic from the magazine ad has a higher rate of conversion than traffic from Google pay-per-click or Trulia deep linking. Visitors from the magazine ad spend 36 minutes viewing 67 listings per session and convert to a sale at a rate of 1 per 500 unique visitors. The Google numbers are quite different – conversion rates are 1 per 2500 and the typical Google customer spends less than 7 minutes on the site and only views 15 properties.

Advertising tactics are continuing to adjust to the behavior of the consumer – and the tactics vary widely from industry to industry. There are a lot of businesses that get 80% of their customers from the Telephone book. My wife’s consulting business gets 1 or 2 calls a year from the telephone book – but they are usually great calls that lead to business.

The balance in media buys is “Do what works.” I would wager that you would sell more blogs by advertising in the tech section of Business First in a major city than you would from geographic pay-per-click on Google.

Take a minute and think about successful new companies – they always explode when they get media coverage – rarely before. That is today’s reality, and the web plays a role in that because it offers depth of information, on demand, 24/7. E-mail also makes the information very easy to pass along to others – and information hits the referral network in a faster and larger way.

Newspaper readership is declining in a major way. However, these stats from the Newspaper Association of America would suggest that they are still pretty powerful.

visit http://www.naa.org/info/facts04/readership-demographics.html